The floor plans of convenience stores and other retail establishments may vary widely from location to location. Consequently, the space available for a particular product display will also vary widely. In such circumstances, it may be desirable to provide a product display or other type of shelving system that can be adapted quickly, easily, and/or inexpensively to fit the available space. Shelving systems including shelves with adjustable widths and/or depths may be used as product displays that are quickly, easily, and/or inexpensively tailored to fit the unique location where they will be used.
Adjustable shelving systems may also be useful when it becomes necessary to rearrange shelving in a particular location in response to changing needs, desires, or available space. For instance, convenience store operators may wish to rearrange product displays from time to time. Such rearrangement may be needed or desired in response to changing inventory, the installation of new equipment, rollout of a new product, or other changes affecting the amount of space available for a particular display. By using an adjustable shelving system, store operators may simply adjust the width and/or depth of the adjustable shelves to maximize the shelving area available for displaying product while avoiding the extra time and expense required to reconfigure a non-adjustable system or purchase or obtain a new product display.
Previous adjustable shelves, such as the ones disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,332,548and 6,142,321both to West and both entitled ‘Adjustable Shelving Apparatus,’ may be formed from two halves, slidably joined together by a number of interlocking channel and groove structures. The channel and groove structures permit the shelf halves to slide relative to one another such that the widths of the shelves may be increased or decreased as desired. These previous shelf structures are limited, however, because the shelf structures cannot be adjusted without also modifying or reconfiguring accompanying structure supporting the shelf structures. Because both halves of the shelves move during adjustment, adjustment of the shelves may not be accomplished without disconnecting the shelves from the accompanying support structure or modifying the shelf or the support structure. Moreover, because both halves of the shelves slide relative to each other, adjustment of the shelves may not be done without disturbing product displayed on the shelf. Also problematically, previous adjustable shelves do not provide structures for the placement of advertisements, pricing information, product identifiers or other information on the shelf that does not have to be removed or repositioned during or after adjustment of the shelf width.